#and a lot of rambling but what else is new for me

[ineffably-human]

So here's my problem.

And it's not about Nandermo, not exactly anyway. Because I didn't expect Nandermo to become textual until the very end, if at all. The show kept making it clear that they liked their ambiguity to keep the relationship on the razor's edge, and Paul Simms made it clearer and clearer that for some reason (put a pin in this) he just couldn't see their connection as a sexual one.

But I frankly don't care about that, because if anything is canon in this show it's that the vampires will eventually fuck everything, and Nandor canonically fucks his other friends. More importantly, their connection was always the emotional core of both characters. And Paul always did say he saw their relationship as a romance, if a strange and non-sexual one.

So I figured we'd maybe get Nandor confessing that Guillermo meant a lot to him (and immediately walking it back a little), or Guillermo confessing how lost he feels without his vampire dream and Nandor offering him a place. Maybe an ambiguous, could-just-be-queerplatonic-partners 'I love you'. Maybe just the hug they kept teasing for three or four seasons and never got. We got like...half of two of those, in episode 10, so I guess that's a wobbly semi-fulfilled thing by my definition of it.

But it's not the Nandermo of it all. It's the Guillermo of it all. And how this final episode seemed to almost mock Guillermo's place at the emotional core of the show.

And the Guillermo of it all is why we never got the Nandermo of it all.

Shadows has vampires doing absurd-ass things, but every character also has things they want and feel, and there are various amounts of emotional ink spilled about it. The show has found space, sometimes very poignant space, to take that seriously in between the piss and sex jokes. The vampires change very slowly and in spirals, they repeat a lot of their old issues that stem back even to their mortal lives. But they always try.

And things do change in the vampire house; that is not the same household from the first season. Every single character, right down to the Baron and the Guide and Derek, are in different and better places than they were before the show began. They've made progress in their individual desires, and a lot of that is due to the improved connections they have with each other, connections we've watched them foster. A lot of the time it's because they're talked about as a found family, something Guillermo started and Guillermo believed before any of the rest of them did.

---

So where is Guillermo this season? Our human point of view, our dynamic character, the character who has a dream and wants something more than any of the others? Whose dream drives the storyline of the entire show?

Guillermo has chosen to be human, and he thinks he can't be part of the household if he's not a vampire. We watch Guillermo try to throw himself back into the human world trying to make up for lost time - to the point that he forgets the person he called his best friend, the people he called his family, in a way I think we never fully resolve. He thinks he's thriving, and he doesn't even seem upset about leaving the others behind.

We watch him revert (and that's fine, people revert sometimes) to the same waiting lapdog he was when we started the series. We watch him realize that and he says no. Nandor stands up for him, and feels better and more fulfilled in doing so, and that's a great capstone for Nandor and Nandor's own tendency for selfishness. And that's excellent. Episode 10 was a great start for all the ground they had to cover.

Nandor offers for Guillermo to be his partner in crime. His sidekick, but Guillermo expressed that desire back in season one so it's not an insult inherently. But here's the problem. Here's the part of Guillermo that has frankly always been a problem, because I thought it's something the show was eventually going to cover respectfully, and instead it was always part of the joke.

---

Guillermo is someone who made a decision sixteen years ago as part of a very young man's desire, to be respected and have cool powers, to live forever, to see the world. (He somehow thought being a vampire, and only a vampire, could get him those things but that's a rant for another time.)

That young man has grown up. He's in his mid-thirties, he has a body count. We've watched him at various times be empathetic, clever, cunning, and brave. Also extremely sexy in bodyguard gear. (And for some reason, the show keeps wanting us to forget that for a season he was extremely competent and badass and sexy pretty much all the time, and he seemed thrilled to be in that role, and he didn't even care about being a vampire if he could protect Nandor in that way and be regarded as 'part of the team'.)

Then Nandor dresses him in a stupid cowboy costume, and gives him a sidekick name ending in 'Kid', which he seems less than thrilled about. They all still talk about him the entire episode as if he's a disobedient child. The vampires speculate if Guillermo is having a fling with the crew, but no - Guillermo's had one boyfriend, who we saw him hug once and nothing more. Despite living in a house for fifteen years that is openly raunchy and shameless, he seems like a character designed to be both desexed and humiliated, and they never expand on the reason why.

(And if Guillermo were ace it'd be amazing, hell it's my headcanon at this point, but I don't think that's what they're going for. I think the show just desexualizes Guilermo. As a matter of praxis. For some reason.)

And the show has done this more and more to Guillermo in the later seasons. Nandor says he could steal original!Freddie easily from Guillermo if he wanted to. The vampires laugh at the thought of him being a vampire - "a little bat pooping everywhere," and Guillermo's time as a vampire has him basically feeling no different in his sexuality or, after a very brief moment, his confidence. Even Nandor's big climactic moment in Episode 10 has him saying that just because Guillermo isn't as cool or hot or interesting or strong as Jordan (or Nandor) doesn't mean Guillermo deserves to be treated poorly.

Look, I don't know if it's because Harvey Guillen is babyfaced, or because he's fat, or because he carries a different energy to his masculinity. Or because it's great to talk about gay sex and being horny, but writing a gay relationship is just too hard. Or some fun combination of all those things.

But I keep thinking about everyone freaking out when Nandor swooped into the collapsed floorboards to save Guillermo in season 4, and everyone freaked out and swooned. And Paul Simms expressed that as "[Nandor] has to save his little buddy."

Guillermo is a grown-ass man, with a desire to feel powerful and special and accepted, who Nandor sees as his little buddy. (Who everyone in the house sees as their little buddy, and it's nice he's part of the family, but...) After every emotional beat that makes them seem like equals with a special connection, he reverts to the less-cool sidekick who makes Nandor feel special and important. And Guillermo's prior devotion to Nandor - not to vampirism, not to a job or promotion, to Nandor - changes to other things, but Nandor never figures out why that hurts him so much. And for some reason the deepest bond of the series just isn't sexual, the showrunner just can't see it that way, in a house where everyone's fucking but not you Guillermo.

We're at the end of the story, and that's our punchline.

---

And we don't end on one of the points where Guillermo is asserting himself as someone who deserves to be taken seriously, and given the things he wants - and the show has had plenty of those moments, all of which seem to be building and evolving his relationships over the years.

We end on Guillermo being told that suddenly, the documentary is packing up without any fanfare or clarity on what they were looking for in the first place. We get Guillermo stumbling for clarity on what it all meant, what the point was for him and what his life is going to be now. We're told over and over again the documentary (and Guillermo, and the viewers) needs a satisfying capstone, needs emotional closure.

And the vampires tell him to shut up. And they tell him this has all happened before, and none of it is special to them. ("No human is special," Nandor said several episodes ago, and never went back on it.) And they tell him to do a little dance for their amusement, and Colin recites some pithy lines. And every attempt to take a moment to care about Guillermo's journey, or the core of his character and what he needs, is turned into a joke for him and for us.

Guillermo's looking for a point to it all, for some kind of fulfillment, and there wasn't one. And everyone is satisfied in that but him. And even if there were times Guillermo got the chance to be respected, to have cool powers (which he kept, but the vampires keep forgetting them), to live forever (he will die and leave Nandor someday!), to see the world - none of these things are going to come to him now.

It would make absolute, complete, and devastating sense for Guillermo to feel he's outgrown them and to leave. Nandor doesn't even seem upset enough to try and stop him. We never really get a clear reason about why he decides to stay.

I mean, it's for friendship or something, with a line about how they can still be close but he needs 'his own thing'. But in six seasons, over and over and over, we've been driven back to the idea that the most emotional part of this story is Guillermo's desire to become accepted in this family, and the effect he has on Nandor. That Guillermo needs this home and he consistently makes Nandor softer, kinder, less selfish and more fulfilled when they're together.

But those parts of their relationship, the love story parts, don't matter. Guillermo is going to find 'his own thing' when it's been clear how entrenched in this world he is (right down to his DNA), but Nandor will drag him back into shenanigans anyway, probably keeping Guillermo from whatever 'his own thing' is.

And Guillermo will always be Nandor's sidekick, his little buddy, never to be taken seriously. And one day, Guillermo will die, and he'll be someone they all forget. And for some reason, he'll be just fine with that, because he belongs with them but will never really be in a better position.

And he'll be satisfied with that. For some reason. But I won't.

[archive-z]

rambling abt my notetaking methods as someone with memory problems for @divorceblogger

i am not an organised person by nature, but in my apartment Everything Must Have Its Designated Place, and that place must be the most intuitive place i will look for something — keys Must be hanging by door, bc if i leave my keys literally anywhere else (coat pocket, bag) i will NOT remember and then i will not be able to lock my door & leave for the day. the goal is work with my brain, not against it. things should be in the most intuitive place possible, and if they can’t be, i should “leave a trail of breadcrumbs” in order to help myself find what i KNOW i will forget. this is also a strategy i apply to my world of Concepts and IdeasTM.

previously, i was organising my notes into a google doc where each entry was dedicated to a single book/chapter/essay, with (1) a summary of the text, (2) relevant quotations transcribed & cited, (3) my own thoughts responding to the material, and (4) other works in the bibliography that i should check out.

This presented several problems: google doc quickly became massive an unwieldy for a 2-year research project & v laggy

lots of closely related ideas existed in isolation bc it was organised by-book instead of concept-first

couldn’t remember where to find shite bc i would have to recall the exact book the idea was from to find it (BAD for the “trail of breadcrumbs” approach)

very linear process — read & summarised one text, moved on to the next. not letting ideas “accumulate“ (build upon each other) bc it was difficult to search/constantly have to refresh myself on notes i’d made six months to a year ago

~late 2021 or early 2022, this talk is what rly sold me on adopting obsidian. i started using obsidian as my primary notetaking tool, specifically for its ability to hyperlink between concepts & display those connections in graph view (picture above). it solved the problems above with the added benefits of being Not Google & being able to sync to my phone/ipad/laptop (via icloud).

now my process looks like:

Step One: Read the material in its entirety while highlighting and making notes in the margins

by entirety I mean like full article, full chapter. if it is a full book, this is going to take multiple sittings bc i only have the cognitive stamina to absorb one chapter at a time. trying to push thru mental fatigue will exacerbate memory problems into a self-fulfilling spiral. the highlighting & annotating is absolutely essential bc it lets me talk back to the book while reading, without the cognitive fatigue/loss of momentum of stopping read to type up notes, etc.

Step Two: Go thru the material again from the beginning, this time transcribing important quotations into a note

somehow people have gotten zotero to talk to their obsidian by tbqh i haven’t bothered bc i’m fairly fast at writing my citations, and the plugins rabbit hole seems like a massive upfront time investment to me.

Step Three: talk back to the material, write my own thoughts & summaries, make connections with other works/ideas

having obsidian as this big repository of my thoughts on previous books i’ve read, previous movies I’ve seen, concepts and defintions from essays, etc makes really easy for me to start writing a new note with my thoughts about something and just go “okay, I’ll put this concept in [[ square brackets ]] so it can link to my note with all my info on that subject rather than rooting thru one million notebooks or folders of misc notes and projects to find what I’d already written abt that subject”

Step Four: Break the material into smaller units of information

i breakdown/separate out my note on a single book/essay into several smaller interlinked notes abt the concepts covered. that way the information lives (with correct bibliographical citation) in a note titled with the concept, and then that note can get added to incrementally with each new book read. this allows my notes to be organised concept-first rather than book-first.

this — ESPECIALLY the part where i connect the notes to other notes — is a rly important part of the process bc it is the “leaving myself a trail of breadcrumbs” to be able to remind myself of concepts/ideas/texts i may have already encountered that feature similar ideas. if i am wondering if i’ve previously written anything on “regicide” i can click on the note called “regicide” and discover i’d written abt macbeth AND hamlet but not agamemnon and leave a note saying “come back to this and connect it to yr other ideas abt regicide as a form of [[patricide]] in [[agamemnon]]”.

Step Five: leave yrself “on ramps” to revisit notes as new concepts are added and connected

i can’t remember where i got this advice, but it was when you are writing more than can be achieved in a single sitting, leave yourself an “on ramp” before you finish for the day. like if i am coming back to something, maybe it’s not the next day but a whole week later. it is a lot more helpful if i open up a note i was working on and see “REMEMBER: YOU WANTED TO LOOK UP THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS FOR THREAD AND FATE TO SEE IF THERE IS A CONNECTION”

do not get caught up in “finishing” a note bc notes will be every-accumulating. work on something for as long as it serves you. if the amount of information is overwhelming, it probably needs to be broken down again into smaller concepts that can be hyperlinked together.

i think that covers most of it but i might come back to this later if there’s anything important i’ve forgotten. oh, yeah, also i love Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis, but that’s less important if yr note writing a thesis, just trying to track info across many different texts for yr own purposes.

[ageofkarme]

Karme couldn't decide if he was just too used to going at things alone or if Polaris really was more generous than most people, but he found the elvhen's helpfulness to be as warm as his eyes. He didn't feel like he had to mask his excited compulsions or apologize for going on his tangents. Karme felt at ease, at least enough to be himself. And that's what Polaris wanted, wasn't it? He had to remind himself that all of this was for the sculpture, or else his heart might've actually leaped out of his throat.

"Th-that's why I've been struggling with my new technique! Or probably. I might not have been breathing right, which I'd need to since it's supposed to be a fire-based thing, turning a room into a forge…" He'd done it on Vlad's command so now Karme wanted to learn how to on his own, however now wouldn't be the time for this particular breakthrough. With his back pressing into Polaris' front as the bard's hand folds around his body to press against his abdomen, Karme realized he was getting even less oxygen now.

He did try to listen and pull air into his depths, imagining the oxygen reaching far inside of him to the point where Polaris touched, but it took him a few tries to get it right, with him becoming slightly flustered. In the end, Karme let out a sigh of relief when Polaris began fondling his balls, feeling how they hummed to life upon contact. "I get that, I only felt at home in our house's vacation estate. I wasn't raised there, but I want it to be my home one day. I asked … well, actually, I told Lady Juliana she'd give it to me when I proved myself. It was so scary!" he rambled a bit, feeling nervous at Polaris inspecting the pair of cores. No one had gotten this close to the dangly balls yet even though they lit up and warmed between his fingers. Karme could hear them in his mind now, appreciating the calm Polaris brought with him. "I know they could get hacked or even commanded with a spell, but that's why I think I want to change my battle style. I want them to feel like my friends, not my servants. So if we have to go into combat we'll do so together. Sure they'll need to protect me, but I won't abandon them. Hopefully we'll come to trust each other enough so they remember I’m their friend even if the worst happens," Karme says, feeling a bit embarrassed at confessing he literally made his latest friends. "They're going to look very cool! This one is hard and serious, so I want to create a body that captures that essence. This one spews a lot and it more whimsical, so I'll probably be a little more creative with his. They're still finding their voices, but I can understand them well enough as is. I can't wait for you to meet them. Can I bring them to your studio?"

The vast majority of nobles who commissioned Polaris shared the sort of vanity that could make any dragon pull his eyes out. Karme was a rare exception that managed to escape any grating notion, while he certainly babbled, there was an earnest and endearing selflessness that Polaris had not yet mapped. He could capture in stone the kindness of a person's eyes and the slope of their nose, but the witch's essence still slipped between his hands. For now, he'd continue to observe and probe, surprising even himself with how much he was enjoying the conversation.

Moved to stand beside Karme as he wove, Polaris counted and eyed the threads of air and earth that the witch wove together to form the weave to make the cargo more manageable. "Clever use of threads," Polaris complimented, though he eyed Karme just as closely, "but you're holding your breath when you channel." An idle observation he'd made from the few demonstrations that Karme had made. "It's a mistake, when we stop breathing we stop thinking." Polaris placed a hand just below Karme's diaphragm, "This deep," he prompted, "into your core." Since Karme was so fond of them.

Ankhuria might have been home once upon a time, but it had been ages since the world had allowed Polaris to think of it as much. "Perhaps I misspoke," Polaris's hand moved from Karme's abdomen to his neck, there he rolled the calloused pad of his thumbs against two of Karme's balls, turning them across his palm. "Home isn't a place, but a feeling. It's been so long since I saw Ankhuria with my own eyes that I don't think I'd recognize it anymore." He continued with the gentle fondling, committing the feel of each curve to memory, though he didn't release them and instead kept them well within his grasp. "Sentience is a feat in itself, let's hope they don't decide to turn against you." Polaris was speaking from experience but he didn't acquiesce as much, "I imagine you've put a good deal of thought toward their appearance."

[grapejuicegay]

Sometimes I just start thinking about this moment - paired with Maddie's "I just think that maybe you're not sure of your own feelings yet. And if there's something that you need to tell Eddie, you will. Just, in your own time" - and then don't stop thinking about it.

Maybe I'm just reading into it but the way this moment moves. Eddie steps forward, Tommy steps up to exactly where Eddie was, Buck turns to look where Eddie was, doesn't find what he was looking for but still finds something good. It's not just ep 4 and 5 where the focus on Eddie blows me away, it's also this.

[retros-artandstuff]

vriska + a transmasc dave doodle

[queenlucythevaliant]

Here's what I'll say regarding choice of worship music (and I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this, so bear with me): I think it's very easy to get burned out on specific kinds of worship, no matter what they are. And that kind of burn-out is hard.

I grew up at a church that did 95% CCM for worship, and after a while it either (a) exhausted me emotionally or (b) bored me. By the time I hit high school, I really really struggled with corporate worship because it felt as though I wasn't responding as I was supposed to. Getting to sing mostly hymns at the church I attended at college was a huge breath of fresh air, and it helped me immensely in terms of re-orienting my heart towards Christ-centered worship (as opposed to me-centered worship.) For the first time in my life, I found myself listening to Christian music on my own time during the week.

I watched the recent Jesus Revolution movie with mom over the summer. Her family started attending Calvary Chapel (then-nascent hippy church in Orange County) midway through her childhood, and she got really excited talking about the difference between the hymns she remembered from early elementary school ("we sang the whole hymnal rather than selecting for the really good ones like they do at your church") and the much more dynamic music that came out of Maranatha and other early "contemporary" Christian groups. She actually played me a whole bunch of the songs she grew up with the next morning. They sounded horrifically cheesy to me, but she got real joy out of it and even ended up texting a few songs to my aunt.

And yet, my mom has remarked a whole bunch of times to me that she really can't stand current CCM; that she desperately misses singing the old hymns. I look at myself and my own experience and I can totally see myself coming back to some of the CCM songs I grew up with and encountering Christ through them all new again. As recently as last month, I had a really beautiful experience driving back from a concert crazy late at night with my sister and listening to some of the old Chris Tomlin and Hillsong stuff that I hadn't heard in a while. It brought me back to a sense of incredible comfort and safety nestled up against God like a baby chick. Do I want to worship with that sort of music every week right now? No, definitely not. But it has its place.

Obviously worship transcends something as incidental as music genre. It's an expression of why we were created: glorifying God and enjoying him forever --- and yet, because of the fall, it's really easy to get burned out on specific expressions of worship. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing so much as just a symptom of the fall. I also think that people who are really burned out on a particular kind of worship can be really, really obnoxious about it. I know I was for a while, and I still definitely have my hangups with CCM.

But like- I don't think it's so much about judgement or superiority towards the kind of worship music that you're burnt out on as it is just the overwhelming sense that that kind of worship music felt exhausting and this kind of music actually feels like I'm able to worship again. I know when I started singing hymns at church, it just felt like I'd found the Rosetta Stone. I was suddenly so much less in my own head on Sunday mornings and oh my goodness singing to God was a joy again and I can't remember but I don't think it's ever been a joy like this before has it?? It was almost like my head was spinning with some great new revelation and when I was obnoxious about it it was mostly a manifestation of my being like Why didn't anyone ever tell me it could be like this? Why isn't everyone singing hymns? It's just so much better this way!

Mostly, it just feels like saying "don't be overly critical of how other Christians like to worship" kind of. Misses the trees for the forest, if that makes sense? Like, it's accurate to the big picture, it's absolutely a true and worthwhile thing to say. But at the same time it kind of rankles for me because it misses how it feels to be truly and deeply alienated by the kind of worship you're exposed to.

For better and for worse, worship is (I think) the spiritual discipline that engages the emotions most directly. The feeling of being in a group of people all worshipping together, and your heart just isn't responding right no matter how you try to re-focus and orient it? It's one of the loneliest feelings I know.

[brittlebutch]

it's actually so fascinating to me that Brennan has created a character that maintains a pretty relaxed and mild-mannered demeanor and has said multiple times that the absolute Core of her is "FEAR" and how often we see this Fear manifest specifically in Avoidance; it really nails a relationship to that mentality where your brain fully Stops recognizing the emotion properly out of like, sheer self-defense from the stress of having to carry it all the time

I think this is also perfectly showcased in the way we tend to see Tula swing so suddenly from 'level and steady' to 'snarling Panic' and then back again - Just because your brain has detached itself from the Conscious Recognition of the emotion doesn't mean it can Actually stop itself from experiencing it. So the Fear is always there and always acting as a stressor, but because of that inability to Identify it there's no way to recognize or address it before that final straw hits and your bodymind jumps Straight into Full Meltdown Mode; but then once again, once you drop even a Little bit below that Peak Terror your brain ceases to process the emotion; it's like the most exhausting form of Poor Object Permanence in the world

And even if Tula is aware of this happening to her, that doesn't really make it any easier to deal with / address. Even if you're able to spot the symptoms Around the emotion -- chest pain, irritation, nausea, whatever -- because the Emotion Itself is basically impossible to find, you can't really Successfully Pin Down what the problem is OR a way to cope with it. If you can't figure out That You Are Anxious, then figuring out What Is Making You Anxious is impossible, which makes Find A Way To Make Peace With That incomprehensible. That's where the Avoidance comes in: you can no longer identify what might be a Dangerous Situation, which means that Anything New has a big potential to be Really Bad in a variety of ways (ranging "I don't Feel Good" to "Fully Lashing Out bc you've entered Fight/Flight and can't get out of it" to "Actual Outside Danger This Time") and that means the Only Way you know how to be Safe is to just Avoid Doing Anything New and Only stick to Familiar Situations, because anything unfamiliar is a monster of a gamble you don't know how to prepare for or cope with

[emmodii-mode]

Just finished my first playthrough of BG3. Romanced Lae'zel, but ending up turning into an Illithid because the idea of making Orpheus or Karlach do it didn't sit well with me (or my character).

I told Lae'zel to leave with Orpheus in the end (I heard she wouldn't stay with a ghaik anyway, which she's valid for, but also, it doesn't feel right to ask her to stay when I know how much her people mean to her). And like-

Her face before she flies off---

She looks so heartbroken and sad.

[lettucedloophole]

spoilers for the latest dungeon meshi ep but oh my GODDD i love marcille my pobrecita.. i think ryoko kui wrote sexism's effects on marcille really well, i think it's neat how she's a silly little guy and other people kind of underestimate her and it seems she is often down on herself about her failures or, "burdening" others in a way that feels very authentic to how it feels to be a woman and have that extra pressure of perfection to dispell suspicions of your inferiority. it's just very much the feeling i gather from it which makes marcille so relatable. and then to put another layer on it when it came out that she did black magic, she's literally A Bad Ass she is LITERALLY a Badass which makes her doubt of herself even more starkly inappropriate, and in this new episode despite the Fact that she is A Bad Ass when everyone's being a BIG MEANIE to her she's like a sad puppy when people don't let her help with revivals and like idk if i missed something but she doesn't even push back against them saying they're going to turn her in in like, a threatening way, she is just... scared. which hurt me i just wanted everyone stop being so MEAN TO HERRR my POBRECITAAAA. MY TINY LITTLE BABYY

i also laughed a lot and freaked out catching up on the two latest episodes today. DEVASTATING miscalculation on chilchuck's part to protect senshi when laois has No sense of Social cue. really happy to see laois and kabru meet, they're really funny together and i see why people like them so much as a ship now!! i am ECSTATIC that shuro is out of the game in terms of ehem. courting falin. bro COULDN'T HACK IT gEDDEM marcille. get that red dragon lady.. and omg it made me SOOOO MAD that they tried to blame marcille for that like how could that even b her fault!!! >:((( its obv the mad mage's doing. i dont get it they r just big meanies!!! stop shitting on my girl!!!

i like how kabru is like laios if he had more social awareness and was a litle Conniving... and omfg i thought it was so funny and sweet how shuro and laios just fucking beat each other up 😭 shuro said i hate autistic ppl fr. no but im glad he showed up for laios & co. in the end.. sometimes you just gotta talk ur feelings out over a fistfight lol

it was soo so fun seeing everyone interact .. all these fun characters... i cant wait to see what happens next!!! i love this show literally one of my fav animes EVER now definitely its so good its SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOD!! im terrified not knowing when its gonna end and how im gonna cope when the season ends 🗿 methinks i will have to read the manga instantly after or i will go insane from dungeon meshi withdrawal..

[stressedjester]

I love being gay and transgender it's super cool really

[stargalaxyshooter]

Since it's probably coming up in this cour?? Or maybe in the next, but I will always be salty with how dirty Kubo did Ukitake throughout the whole manga - but especially in tybw. Not really utilizing him the way you utilized Shunsui was one thing, but not even giving him a fight before you take him out was dirty 😭

And don't even get me started on how his death was - from what I remember - ultimately pointless, he was giving up his life for the soul king only for Ywach to absorb him anyways. Maybe that did sorta help, idk my memory of it is kinda foggy, but it forreal felt like a "oh damn this guys still a thing gotta give him this random thing to do and then kill him off".

I appreciate that because he's gone, there was a vacancy in the 13 division but Kubo could've given ukitake a battle in tybw and maybe have him either die from said battle or survive it & choose to retire afterwards due to the injuries he sustained from it (like his body was already frail, so maybe he pushed himself too far after using his bankai WHICH WE NEVER SAW). Which then leads to canon with rukia being captain.

There's sooooooo many sternritter's that are introduced and instead of giving some of them to other characters - or have them group together if you don't want too many individual fights - we instead get the same characters have multiple fights with diff opponents or have some of the sternritter's off screened.

For example, we get characters like Kenpachi or Hitsugaya who are given multiple fights in this arc (not necessarily complaining I do like them), while Rukia, who is the second most important character in this show gets one actual good fight where we finally see her bankai. And is then not really utilized after that. That's wild imagine if Sasuke, who is also a deuteragonist, was only given one fight in the 4th war and then fades into the background while naruto/others go fight madara. Side tangent, but I'm just pointing out how weirdly characters were used from the main cast to side characters.

And it's not like it's just Ukitake, kubo also seemed to not like the visored (vizard?) either. Goddamn were they heavily underutilized, got introduced in the story as being one of the major new factions + given a backstory that gave them a connection to both the seireitei & aizen but were ultimatley cast aside for no reason.

Even their inclusion in tybw was pathetic, had them taken out anytime they tried to do something like what was the point Kubo what do you have against these characters?? At least chose to either have them fade into the background after only serving their purpose during the arrancar saga or have some die a meaningful death. (Not that killing characters off when they "serve" no more purpose = good writing. It just would've been something to actually chew on than what we actually got)

Idk something other than that half assed shit, as someone who likes the visored it was painful to watch. There's so many frustrating things about Bleach when I think about it, you have all these cool characters/designs who have interesting personalities, purpose, backstory and then they never get to do anything other than serve as "characters who get offed or beaten up to make the ones who save them look good", which sucks.

Hopefully, in the second cour, or third, some of these things change? I don't expect Kubo to care about ukitake or the visored now but maybe some other side characters like hisagi or yumichika who can finally complete his character arc of never using his shikai in front of others, he was about to use it but got taken out by a zombie. Oh, and also! Ikakku, similarly to yumichika, he also didn't get to have his character arc come full circle. We never got to see him use his bankai again, it seemed he was about to but got taken out by the same zombie - so maybe next cour...? Fingers crossed 🤞 that at some point both him & yumichika can show their concealed powers without fear of one not being accepted and the other not being allowed in the squad anymore. Especially when we know that at the end of the manga, ikkaku replaces yachiru as lieutenant

[alchemiclee]

been looking in tags for a few days now to see if anyone else found the whole high cloud quintet and related story to be a bit.....poorly written, nonsensical, contradictory, full of plot holes and loose ends, etc. apparently i'm not the only one. (and i'm not even talking about shipping stuff, because any time I saw someone mad about bad writing, someone always replies to be homophobic and laugh about failed ships. weirdos.) it could have been so good but was thrown into the garbage for the most part (IF you noticed all the plot holes and contradiction. if not, then it's a fine enough story tbh. I expect most people to see it on surface level and not read all the little hidden lore bits and try to piece it together like my autistic brain did. which is ok! enjoy it if you liked it and ignore me 😆)

[daz4i]

i literally can't think about life or the future for more than a few seconds without getting so distressed that i shut down. surely this is a good sign for things to come

[real-life-cloud]

im GOING to write today ........ i WILL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bloos-bloo]

I just have a strong hyper fixation for greninja 😭 my baddd-

[cherrylight]

im restarting my animal crossing new horizons island after not playing it for several months ....